The present invention relates to a material feeding mechanism for transporting or feeding materials or objects to be sintered to a continuous sintering furnace that is used for sintering fuel pellets, for example, in a process of manufacturing nuclear fuel.
When materials are fed or carried into a furnace casing of a continuous sintering apparatus, the inside of the furnace casing has to be kept at a constant atmosphere. Therefore, an atmosphere-displacement chamber is provided in front and in the rear of the furnace casing to perform evacuation of the atmosphere-displacement chamber and charging of the furnace atmosphere gas into the atmosphere-displacement chamber repetitively at the time of feeding and transporting the material.
In a prior art material feeding system, as shown in FIG. 5, a material S transported by a transporting conveyor 1 is carried into an atmosphere-displacement chamber 2 in a state where an entrance door 2a is opened and an exit door 2b is closed. Next, the entrance door 2a is closed and the atmosphere in the atmosphere-displacement chamber 2 is displaced or replaced by the furnace atmosphere, and then the exit door 2b of the atmosphere-displacement chamber 2 is opened, and a loading pusher 3 is driven in the direction perpendicular to the direction of transportation of the transporting conveyer 1 to feed the material S into a furnace casing 4 of a continuous sintering apparatus. The material S fed to the furnace casing 4 is placed at the predetermined location in the furnace casing by using a main pusher 5 provided in the furnace casing 4.
According to the prior art material feeding system shown in FIG. 5, since the feeding flow line of the material is cranked shape as shown by the arrow X, the longitudinal dimensions of the portions in front and in the rear of the furnace casing 4 have to be long enough. In addition, since a drive unit 3a for the loading pusher 3 have to be provided on the side of the atmosphere-displacement chamber, the space required for installing the material feeding mechanism becomes disadvantageously large.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a material feeding mechanism in association with the continuous sintering apparatus in which the longitudinal dimension of the continuous sintering apparatus can be made as short as possible to realize a compact design as a whole.
According to the present invention, there is provided a material feeding mechanism in association with a continuous sintering apparatus for feeding a material from an atmosphere-displacement chamber into a furnace casing of a continuous sintering apparatus by using a loading pusher, said material being carried by a transporting conveyer into said atmosphere-displacement chamber, characterized in that the transporting conveyor, the atmosphere-displacement chamber, and the loading pusher are arranged in such a manner that a direction in which the material is carried into the atmosphere-displacement chamber by the transporting conveyor and a direction in which the material is fed from the atmosphere-displacement chamber into the furnace casing by the loading pusher are linearly aligned, and the loading pusher and a drive unit thereof are installed under a floor of the atmosphere-displacement chamber so that the loading pusher moves up over a surface of the floor of the atmosphere-displacement chamber and moves forward and backward on the floor surface of the atmosphere-displacement chamber when the material is fed into the furnace casing.
The loading pusher in this case preferably comprises a chain pusher including a sprocket rotationally driven by a drive motor and disposed under the floor of the atmosphere-displacement chamber, a chain rotating via the sprocket, and a pusher head provided at the predetermined position on the chain, so that the pusher head moves up over the floor surface of the atmosphere-displacement chamber as the chain rotates, and moves forward and backward on the floor surface of the atmosphere-displacement chamber.